Author Topic: That "Oh Bugger!" moment  (Read 1381 times)

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
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That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« on: 18 February, 2020, 10:35:52 am »
My dear wife is not one of the world's great conversationalists. After a few minutes nattering with her, you'd soon realise that you had found out a good deal about her primary school years, but not necessarily a lot else. Even though we grew up more than 200 miles apart, I feel as though I know personally some of her classmates and she often wonders what they are doing now. It is sometimes as though the last 50 years were just a bad dream*.

Imagine her delight last night, on spodding her way through hitherto unexplored swamps and forests of Facebook when she came across a group called "I grew up in Stalybridge". She joined it and started to sift through all the photographs of whit walks, band contests, black pudding and tripe competitions and that sort of thing until eventually she happened upon a couple of school photographs from her primary school years. And there they all were! James Delaney, the boy who could not consistently solve the riddle that meant that seven eights always make 56. And there, indeed, was Yvonne Barker (or whatever her married name is), Jan's Very Best Friend from primary school. Gleefully she sent out a friend request to Yvonne and then started to look at what information there was about her.

It was at that point that she spotted the fateful words "Likes Boris Johnson" and "Likes Brexit Party".

*many of them were
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #1 on: 18 February, 2020, 01:02:57 pm »
Well, yeah. But isn't that an example of letting politics create a rift in friendships? Okay, in this case it would be resumption of a long-interrupted friendship which may or may not be worth resuming, but letting politics rift current friendships means the destructive forces are winning.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #2 on: 18 February, 2020, 01:16:22 pm »
There's Politics and there's politics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqH_0LPVoho


Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #3 on: 18 February, 2020, 01:26:25 pm »
Nothing surprising there.  People you went to school with and aren't still your friends tend not to be for a reason.  Unless you've got a bad case of Stockport Syndrome[1], you've probably moved on and found nicer people.

I'm sure many of the people I went to school with who didn't go into academia have become obnoxious high-achieving libertarian types, if not actual tories.  Such is the toll of middle class privilege.

One of the strongest arguments for having nothing to do with Facebook is that it's relatively unlikely to put you in contact with the people who made your teenage years a living hell.


[1] Term for the people barakta grew up with who now live round the corner from their mum and think that Sheffield is an incredibly long way away.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #4 on: 18 February, 2020, 01:31:07 pm »
Several of my 'I Grew Up in Golders Green' friends have similar views.

J is not alone!

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #5 on: 18 February, 2020, 01:42:15 pm »
One of my best long-term friends has almost opposing political views to me on lots of things.  We actually have had lots of fantastically interesting debates as a result and lots of bigoted assumptions on both sides can be challenged and addressed.


But that's been built over years.  I guess as opening gambits, declarations like that aren't likely to engender friendship...  I have to say this guy, also , thinks Boris is as much of a tosspot as I do, despite his tory allegiances.
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Redlight

  • Enjoying life in the slow lane
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #6 on: 18 February, 2020, 02:17:51 pm »
... a bad case of Stockport Syndrome[1],

[1] Term for the people barakta grew up with who now live round the corner from their mum and think that Sheffield is an incredibly long way away.

Love it.  I spent my secondary school daze in a small town in Lancashire, which I was glad to see the back of, aged 18, and have returned to only twice in the intervening years. I don't keep in touch with many of my school contemporaries but, via the couple that I do, I am amazed at the incestuously high proportion who not only still live there but also married people who were in the same class/year at school.  I suspect that many of them would turn out to be Brexiteers, given their seeming reluctance to venture anywhere east of the A59*.

*There are a couple of exceptions, of course. One was last heard of working at the scientific base in Antartica.
Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #7 on: 18 February, 2020, 02:45:32 pm »
My sister once liked something on Faecebook from Britain First  :sick:
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

rob

Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #8 on: 18 February, 2020, 02:58:18 pm »
Given I grew in Grimsby this happens a lot.

I went to a funeral in Scunthorpe on Thursday.   I hadn't been there for 10+ years and I could tell my Mum didn't want to be there.   We were harangued to come to the drinks afterwards which were at a working mans club nearby.   It was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me having been part of the 'liberal metropolitan elite' for over 20 years.   Not sure you can ever go back.

ian

Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #9 on: 18 February, 2020, 04:18:14 pm »
East Midlands defunct mining town, left at 18 didn't go back (other than university holidays). I probably visit my family every couple of years. I don't linger. Last time I rode my Brompton through the town. I think the local drivers were so stupefied with the sheer metropolitan elitism of this gesture they neglected to run me over to death.

Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #10 on: 18 February, 2020, 05:29:28 pm »
One of the strongest arguments for having nothing to do with Facebook is that it's relatively unlikely to put you in contact with the people who made your teenage years a living hell.

Did you mean to write 'likely'?

I can't think of a reason to want to be in touch with the people who made my teenage years a living hell (other than to sneer at their current decrepit shitness before pouring petrol over them and flicking that match)
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
    • Stuff mostly about weather
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #11 on: 18 February, 2020, 06:09:09 pm »
FB has facilitated Jan and me finding some college friends with whom we had totally lost touch, and that has been a great result. So you win some and you lose some. But when you know someone from the ages of 18 to 21, they are reasonably fully formed and it's less likely that there will be any shocks. Primary school is a totally different kettle of tripe.

Stalybridge is, of course, in the Stockport Triangle. To quote Jo Brand, "If you want to know what Stalybridge was like 50 years ago, go to Stalybridge."
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #12 on: 18 February, 2020, 06:21:10 pm »
One of the strongest arguments for having nothing to do with Facebook is that it's relatively unlikely to put you in contact with the people who made your teenage years a living hell.

Did you mean to write 'likely'?

No, but perhaps I should have.  It's a terrible piece of sentence construction.  I was distracted by remembering a horrendous homophobic bully who's now allowed to do medicine on actual patients...

Re: That "Oh Bugger!" moment
« Reply #13 on: 18 February, 2020, 11:22:23 pm »
I've hardly ever been back to where I grew up, and, since my Dad died, to another part of Yorkshire where he lived for forty years. I have no desirevto do so!

I've traced only one of my school colleagues; that was because I saw a familiar name listed as involved with an arts charity. It transpired that he had become a solicitor and was a partner in a firm that got into deep trouble with the Law Society for extortion... he always was an arsehole.